News

What to do if a laptop was stolen or lost?

The bottom line is no matter how careful you are with your laptop, mistakes occur and losing a laptop (or having one stolen) is likely to happen to you or your employees at some point in time.

Recent figures show that at least 1000 government laptops or flash drives have been reported missing or stolen since 2015 (source: The Guardian).

In the hands of a relatively unsophisticated hacker, all of your laptop information can be transferred off, often exposing an open back door into your network. And as if this wouldn’t be enough, you are risking to receive financial penalties of up to £500,000 due to failure of complying with the Data Protection Act 1998.

We’ve all seen it in the news, but imagine the embarrassment of having to contact all of your clients and partners to let them know their confidential information may be compromised because one of your unsecured laptops is in the hands of a criminal!

Asking employees to be more careful about where they keep their laptop is a good step in the right direction, but accidents happen. For this reason, measures should be taken to lock down and secure any mobile devices you and your staff use to access your company’s network.

Here are just a few things that should be looked at:

Encrypt all information – Drive encryption software such as BitLocker (which is included in some versions of Microsoft Windows) can secure all the data on your hard drive. Also, check your computer to see if it has a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip which is generally more secure than those without TPM.

Two factor authentication – Don’t rely only on passwords to keep your laptop safe. Hackers can usually break most passwords in a few hours. We recommend adding a second way for people to prove that they are who they say they are before they are able to log in. Click here to find out more about our IT security services.

Log / backup information – It’s critical to log and backup all information on business laptops to ensure smooth operations in the event of loss or destruction. We can automate the backups so they are done on schedule and in a way that won’t interfere with the use of the laptop. Click here to find out more about our backup solutions.

The right response - What happens when an employee loses a laptop? Do you have a next step action plan in place?

77% of organisations say protecting their data is important, but only 11% prevent it from leaving the building (source: toshiba.co.uk).